Intuit released it’s latest version of it’s flagship product Quicken 2010 on October 11th 2009 so being the geek I am had to acquire a copy for review and see if it’s worth the expense both for myself and my readers. The sad state of affairs is that as far as the personal finance software world is concerned Intuit is the only game in town for a comprehensive package of expense tracking, investment tracking, budgeting and planning. We lost Microsoft Money this year so it really leaves this a one horse race in the standalone software department. You Need a Budget is the only other real contender in this area but their focus is solely on budgeting and expense tracking. I use YNAB for my day to day tracking today but I wanted to see if Quicken could replace YNAB and then some. Let’s dig in.
If you are looking for a Mac Version of Quicken please read my new review of Quicken Essentials which is the only Quicken game in town for you Apple fanboy and fangirls.
Quicken 2010 Version Comparison
There are 4 different versions of Quicken 2010, okay really there are 5 if you include their free Quicken Online service, okay scratch that there are 6 including the Rental Property Manager, but I’m going to skip that one outright, that’s a pretty specialized niche. But we’ll just focus on their standalone products. For my review and use I opted for Quicken 2010 Deluxe edition I wanted to try out some of the additional tools not included with the Starter Edition.
| Quicken 2010 Edition | Starter Edition | Deluxe | Premier | Home & Business |
| GET ORGANIZED | ||||
| Step by Step Guidance | X | X | X | X |
| Bank and Credit Card Accounts in 1 place | X | X | X | X |
| Import Data from Financial Institution | X | X | X | X |
| Automatically categorizes expenses | X | X | X | X |
| Bill Alerts to help avoid late fees | X | X | X | X |
| Schedule recurring and upcoming bills to show impact to income | X | X | X | X |
| SAVINGS/DEBT REDUCTION GOALS | ||||
| Import from all versions of Quicken | X | X | X | |
| Investment Accounts, 401(k), IRA, 529, bank, credit cards, etc. | X | X | X | |
| Create a Debt Reduction Plan | X | X | X | |
| Retirement Savings Tools | X | X | X | |
| Create Savings Plans for college, house or other purchases | X | X | X | |
| INVESTMENT MANAGEMENT & TAX PLANNING | ||||
| Consolidate All investment accounts in one place | X | X | ||
| Comprehensive investing, planning and savings tools | X | X | ||
| Morningstar Ratings for mutual funds to help make informed decisions | X | X | ||
| Track cost basis and estimate capital gains to help minimize taxes | X | X | ||
| Show changes in assets, liabilities and net worth | X | X | ||
| MANAGE YOUR BUSINESS | ||||
| Auto categorization of Business or Personal Expenses | X | |||
| Show your Business Profit or Loss | X | |||
| Run Schedule C Reports to ease Tax Preparation | X | |||
| Highlights tax-deductible business expenses | X | |||
| Create invoices and estimates | X |
Where to Buy
You can save a trip to the store and buy online direct from Intuit. The nice part is that you can download it immediately. Also right now as of this posting if you buy Quicken 2010 Deluxe or any of the more advanced products you can get Willmaker Plus for free.
Quicken 2010 Unboxing
Why they don’t just distribute software in a DVD like box I’ll never know, maybe it’s so they could include their Chase Bank backed credit card offer! No thanks, but how about a getting started managing your finances card? Nope not in there.
Documentation
Yeah not so much. There’s none included with the software instead on the CD wrapper you are directed to http://newquicken.com/getstarted which sends you right to the Quicken forums will you find absolutely no help on getting going with Quicken 2010. Apparently Intuit wants to foster some social networking and let us learn from ourselves. You’ll have to dig but as of this writing there’s next to nothing in the forums. This is a disappointing way to be introduced to this product. There’s not so much as a quick start guide to get you going. In the help menu you will find some guidance, albeit terse. If you’ve never used quicken before your in for a learning curve. Oh yeah if you go to look for the user manuals to print out as referenced on your CD cover, you won’t find them. No actual user manuals.
Quicken 2010 The Official Guide (Quicken Press)
Quicken Press just put out an official guide to using Quicken 2010 that might also be helpful for getting up to speed with this latest version. I haven’t reviewed it as of yet but the current reviews seem favorable. It was written by Maria Langer who is a freelance writer, helicopter pilot, and long-time Quicken user. A former financial analyst with a degree in accounting, she is the bestselling author of the previous editions of this book. It covers the Quicken Deluxe and Premier versions.
Topics Covered by the Official Guide
- Customize Quicken for your preferences
- Track your cash flow
- Set up Online Account Services
- Automate transactions and tasks
- Reconcile checking, savings, and credit cards accounts
- Track investments and optimize your portfolio
- Monitor assets and loans
- Manage household records
- Reduce debt, save money, and plan for retirement
- Simplify tax preparation and maximize deductions
Quicken 2010 Startup Screen
In an effort to get you going as quickly and easily as possible they provide a 3 step process to get your accounts setup, enter your recurring bills and then go on to budgeting and savings goals. The process is quick and painless and does a decent job getting you up and running with the basics. It almost makes up for the lack of documentation.
The Quicken 2010 Check Register
If you’ve ever used Quicken or Money or frankly any personal finance software the check register will look familiar to you. It’s found by click on the Banking tab at the top of your Quicken window. It’s use is pretty straightforward and makes that all important cash register cha-ching! when you enter a transaction. Ah Quicken you’re so 2000 Late.
Syncing Quicken with your Bank or Credit Union
While setting up your initial accounts you have the option to pick your financial institution from Quicken’s comprehensive list. My smallish credit union as well as my bigger banks were all in here and Quicken went ahead and imported the last 90 days of transactions from my accounts. This is where Quicken shines, pretty much any bank or credit union is setup to have Quicken pull your data. This is by and large Quicken’s best and most powerful feature.
Once you’ve setup all of your accounts it’s a simple matter to click on Update to bring in all of your bank’s cleared transactions.
Budgeting and Spending Goals with Quicken 2010
All right let’s be honest. For anyone doing any form of more advanced budgeting Quicken has not fit the bill. Sure it’s always had some generic spending limits but not really a comprehensive planning product nor an easy way to maintain variable expenses or sinking funds from month to month. With 2010 they might have actually done it. 
On the planning Tab under Other Tools you’ll find the budget. This opens a wizard type menu where you can go through and record your expected income, the frequency and then include your various budget categories you want to track. I like the fact that you can set a time period for things such as Garbage that may be every 2 months or your paycheck which may come twice a month. Setup is relatively simple. When you’re done with that your Planning page will have all sorts of useful info regarding your current budget status.
Quicken 2010 clearly defines your actual expenditures versus what you’ve allocated shows whatever balance you may have left in that category as a “Left Over.” The part I love is that they have the concept of a Rollover Reserve which means if you have a category such as Auto Maintenance that you want to keep building month to month but won’t necessarily have frequent expenditures you can watch your balance build. If you decide that you have too much money in a category you can allocate some or all of it to another category. First inspection this looks very well done, time will tell if it’s usable for the long term. I know many users complained of trouble with the 2009 version of this function.
The essence of the budget planner is that it goes well beyond their simplistic view of allocating a set amount of money to a category. What they’ve really got setup is a framework for a Zero Based Budget and I’m anxious to try and use it over the coming months.
Savings Plans or Savings Targets
If you are saving up for a specific big ticket item or event, Christmas comes to mind. You can easily setup a Savings Target in your Planning Window. It shows your progress towards that goal and is rather simplistic. You can also create a Savings Plan and Quicken will effectively create a separate account just for that savings goal. It’s a strange way to go about tracking the progress of your goal and doesn’t show up in your planning window. Contributions to the saving goal are recorded as transfers from your other account. You’d be better off creating an actual savings account and transferring it there rather than a virtual savings account which is the methodology here. What it’s doing is hiding that money from your check register.
Quicken 2010 Investment Tracking
Not only does quicken link into your banking institutions it will bring in your investment portfolio such as your mutual fund accounts, IRA’s, 401(k)’s, 529 College Savings plans and the like. I focused most of my time on reviewing the budgeting and expense tracking portions of Quicken 2010 but from what I’ve seen there are a lot of tools available to track your investments and provide some capital gains guidance as well. The premier version of Quicken has even more capability in this area if you are so inclined. This is really an area that none of the other personal finance software providers can touch. If I use Quicken for nothing else it will be to track my investments and net worth going forward.
Quicken 2010 Extra Tools
Depending on which version you purchase you’ll get some extra tools to help you with your finances. Some useful, some not.
Debt Reduction Planner
If you’re rolling your own debt snowball and want to create a printout of your debt payment plan then you can use the debt reduction tool. It’s an okay solution, I still prefer the free spreadsheet version for Debt Reduction but hey it’s a tool you’ve got as an added bonus.
Password Vault
This is a secure place to keep all of your other passwords for your banks and other online sites and protect with one common password. Again it’s nice they include it, but you don’t really want to be limited to Quicken for all of your password needs, and it doesn’t scale well if you are on another computer. If you’re looking for a good way to manage your Passwords we’ve got you covered with some other free tools.
Bill Pay
This is a service that Intuit provides so that you can pay your bills direct from Quicken 2010. It’s a $9.99 a month charge for something that you should be able to do with your bank for free. If your bank doesn’t offer free bill pay, find a new bank. And just forgot about this ridiculous service.
Quicken 2010 Review Wrap-Up and Recommendations
Who’s It For?
It’s for the discriminating user out there who requires all of their personal finance ducks in a row. This is the place for tracking all of your basic finances along with your investments. It does a good job of this. It’s also got enough budgeting horsepower built in that this could be your one stop software application.
Who’s It Not For?
First off Apple and Linux users you’re still out of luck. This is a windows only release supporting XP/Vista and Windows 7. Intuit still promises an upcoming Mac version in February of 2010.
I would also not recommend this product for someone who doesn’t like 4000 different options for everything. Some of the power of Quicken 2010 quickly wears off when you try and navigate it’s seemingly limitless options. If you are looking for something just to use as a budgeting tool with some level of expense tracking, I still recommend You Need a Budget. It’s much, much simpler albeit without investment tracking, bill pay, and online syncing of bank data.
My Recommendation
Honestly I was prepared to try out this software and then give away my copy but I’m frankly intrigued. The last version of Quicken I used was 1999 before switching to MS Money and now on to You Need a Budget. I’ve got too much invested in YNAB to dump it outright and I really do like it’s budgeting interface. But I have to admit the investment features and various eye candy have me contemplating the move to Quicken. What I’m going to do is run them both in parallel for a month or two. If you want my advice for today, if you want to track investments and have the benefits of online bank synching go for Quicken 2010 otherwise I’d go with You Need a Budget.
Related posts:
{ 11 trackbacks }
{ 154 comments… read them below or add one }
Thanks for your review.
We have released a definitive date for the release of Quicken for Mac 2010…it’s February.
Thanks,
Scott
Quicken
Thanks for the Update Quicken Scott, updated in post.
Will the new Mac release convert all fields from Windows versions? I have been told that converting to the Mac version will cause a loss of much data, especially investment data. I have been using Quicken for Windows for as long as I can remember (back to the Andrew Tobias MYM days) and am now running Quicken on a Mac through a Windows virtual machine! Not the most convenient.
Thanks!
Michael, I honestly have no idea about the Mac version, this is a question better sent to Intuit. If you use twitter you can reach them at @quicken
I was a Quicken user for years…but switched. I grew weary of Intuit disabling features on older versions — features like connecting to my bank account and updating fund prices. I also grew tired of the nag screens up selling me to packages I did not want. I figure, if I make the buying decision to get a particular version then the ads should stop.
So I switched to Moneydance. 
I’m intrigued that you are using Moneydance. I too am weary of Intuit trying to sell me software every time I start Quicken. Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of good options for personal finance software. I’ve downloaded a trial version of Moneydance (MD) and will use it alongside my new copy of 2010 Home&Business. I’ve looked at the MD website and it is easy to find valuable information there. The folks at MD seem anxious to please and customer service also seems good. Hmmm…if I find MD does what I need then its the trashcan for quicken.
Thanks so much, I have been trying to find out practical insight on using the investment management tools in the Premier version. I really appreciate the heads-up about the learning curve challenge and the guides you provided.
You got it, thanks for stopping by!
Thanks for the review. Also, I learned that Money is gone, which I didn’t know. I am a long-time on and off quicken user, having started in the 90s. My main problem with the software, and indeed the whole process of tracking finances, is that the synchronization with the accounts is always imperfect. You always lose a few transactions even with automated downloads. This makes you question the data, which then makes the whole exercise of downloading all the stuff a waste of time. Quicken needs to find a way to ensure that the program gets ALL the data regardless of how often you synchronize.
I haven’t really encountered that one myself at least once I got on a plan. I agree the initial startup is rough and definitely is a time commitment. Myself using You Need a Budget you actually download the transaction list as a file from your bank and import. In the solid year of use I haven’t missed anything and I’m watching every penny like a hawk. I’m not sure that Quicken or YNAB or anything else could do anything other than deal with what your bank may be providing as information, the best policy in my opinion is to be sure you’re doing both, if you let automation take over your finances entirely you may never know where your dollars went. Thanks for stopping by!
I was a MS Money user for years. Just bought Quicken Premiere 2010 after tinkering with the free online Quicken. I’m really upset that most of my financial institutions don’t have available synching/transaction downloading, including my two retirement plans: TIAA-CREF and New York State Deferred Compensation Plan; and my Capital One checking and savings accounts. The setup screens declare that it’s “Unavailable.”
Capital One worked with MS Money and the online Quicken.
You should check on your institutions before you buy Quicken 2010.
I had Quicken 2009, but just purchased 2010 because of your review. I desparately need a better budgeting tool than exists in 2009. Your article shows 2 more tabs on the budget, a way to budget income and expenses (Money has this but it’s going away).
My budget 2010 screen still has only Setup, Budget, Summary – it’s missing Income, Expenses – the whole reason I bought 2010.
Am I missing something?
Tim
Hmm are you on the planning tab? The wizard is under: OTHER TOOLS. My laptop died where I had quicken installed and I’m reloading Vista as we speak, when it’s done I’ll get it on there and give you exactly how I did it.
Yes it’s there on the planning tab click on Other Tools and you can choose Budget. Did you purchase the Deluxe version? I’m not positive whether it’s actually there in the starter edition.
Thanks for your feedback. I purchased Quicken Premier . My planning tab does not have Other Tools. I can get to the Budget, but it’s the same screen as the 2009 version (has only Setup, Budget and Summary tabs – missing Expenses, Income and Savings). Did you import your data from a 2009 version? I’ll try to install it clean on a different machine and let you know the result – in a couple of days.
FYI.
I installed Quicken 2010 on another computer – this one uses Vista, in the first post I was using XP. The Budget stuff seems to work in Vista exactly as you described, although I really haven’t done anything yet – all the tabs are there Setup, Budget, Summary, Income, Expenses, Savings. I am working with Quicken support to get next the steps for my XP machine. They suggested I uninstall and re-install the XP version, but first I’m going to experiment with my XP-converted-to-2010 files on my Vista machine.
Thanks.
Thanks for your help.
That’s really strange that it works differently in XP, let us know if you find anything out.
Hi Paul, Thanks for all your hardwork in reviewing this new product. I have used Quicken for many years and had no problems until I got Windows Vista. How is Quicken 2010 interfacing with Vista? Did you have any problems with that regard? Thanks for your help!
Erin,
You’re very welcome. Yes I ran Quicken 2010 both under Vista and Windows 7 and worked fine under both operating systems.
Thank you sooooooooooo much!
I had used quicken 2006 for several years before “upgrading” to 2009. I upgraded because of this annoying message that recommended that I upgrade before Quicken ceased to support my older version. Boy was this a mistake. After upgrading, the graphs that I use to track my spending were no longer accurate. The expense graph numbers actually change when enlarged. Frustrated, I called Quicken and talked for several hours to a guy in India who finally told me that my data was corrupted. I told him that my data was just fine before I upgraded. Now I have paid another $50 to upgrade to Quicken 2010 in hopes that Quicken has repaired the flaws in the last version. My recommendation to anyone considering an upgrade is to stay put as long as everything is working. I wish that I had never upgraded. Quicken support in unhelpful if you have any problems related to an upgrade.
Sorry to hear that John, this might be something potential customers should be aware of.
I updated to Quicken 2010 after getting a new computer using Windows 7; no download problems yet, but if I reconcile the investment account without a linked cash account, all the trades revert to a 0 basis with a 100%. Email tech support can only help with data corruption files and referred me to phone support. Phone support was unhelpul telling me that since the transactions were corrected using Ctrl+Z that my problem was solved. When asked what to do about future errors, she told me that wouldn’t happen, but it did. I’ve stopped reconciling while I wait for phone support to call me back — two days and still waiting. Odd note: it only happens with my Schwab accounts, not the account from Principal.
Hi
I have the old 2004 program but having just updated to windows 7 i have found it will no longer run. Can you tell me if the 2010 program gives you the option to work in GBP instead of dollars.
Cheers
Stev
Well I can say that it has an option in the Preferences for multi currency support but doesn’t seem to allow me to switch everything to GBP, this might be a question better directed at Inuit, sorry I couldn’t be more helpful.
Hello Paul,
Does the 2010 Deluxe version (as opposed to having to pay the extra money for the Home & Business version specifically for this reason) allow for the creation of classes so that you can classify revenues and expenses both by category and within, say, a “Personal” or “Business” class, so that you can quickly run business profit/loss statements, for example?
As a longtime Quicken user, I know earlier Deluxe versions included this feature, but I don’t want to buy 2010 Deluxe to find that this previous feature has been turned off so as to force those combined personal/business users to buy the more expensive Home & Business version.
I would like to order/download one of these two version immediately, and so would GREATLY appreciate your letting me know as soon as you’re able whether I’ll be able to accomplish the tracking of both my personal and business expenses using the less expensive Deluxe version.
Thank you in advance, as well as for the whole review.
Speaking of which, I just spent quite a bit of time out on the YNAB website (not having known about this until reading your above review) and am now wondering whether, in fact, I might be better off — given the variable nature of my self-employment/business income — going this route rather than returning to Quicken.
I guess this brings up another question. Does YNAB have the built-in capacity to track both “Personal” and “Business” revenues/expenses (same question as my first paragraph, above, but concerning YNAB rather than Quicken Deluxe)?
Also what about dealing with multiple currencies (e.g., US $, UK £), both Quicken- and YNAB-wise?
I was certain until now that I’d go with one of the two Quicken versions (Deluxe or Home & Business), but wonder whether YNAB might be better for my purposes. I don’t tend to use the more peripheral features of Quicken (investment tracking, etc.). Mostly revenue/expense tracking, profit/loss reports (for tax purposes), etc.
Any suggestions which might nudge me into one or the other … Quicken or YNAB? And if the former, whether Deluxe still retains the ability to break out by customizable classes (e.g., “Personal”, “Business”).
Thank you, Paul.
Sean
Hey Sean,
Wow thanks for your detailed ask, I’ll do my best.
Looked through quicken 2010 there are plenty of tools to run reports on specific categories and break them out. It also supports tags which sounds like the “classes” you were talking about. From the help:
This feature is in my copy of Deluxe so I can confirm. If you realize there are still some features you want there is an option to upgrade to the next from within the deluxe, but I don’t think you’ll need to at all. And thanks to your question I’m going to start using this myself to classify FiscalGeeks activities out of my own personal account.
As to YNAB’s ability to track the two, it can, but it would solely be within the concept of a category. So any expenses would have to be assigned to say your business category and then you can have any number of subcategories under that business. It’s not as slick as this tagging method. Also YNAB’s reports are not going to give you what you want. Also there is not support for muliple currencies in YNAB. The 3.0 version is on the horizon where it should have a number of new features but it can’t match quicken’s capabilities in that area yet. So for what you are asking about I’d probably go with quicken.
Thank you, Paul. What you’ve passed along is hugely helpful, and I greatly appreciate your taking the time to look into this for me, and to write back.
Also, I think you’re right that Quicken sounds like the way to go. Now, whether to just say screw it and get the Home & Business version or just go with Deluxe given that it does allow the tagging of business expenses. With that feature intact I know that the reporting functionality (at least with previous versions) is robust enough to be able to pull the customizable reports I need to both manage the business and for tax reporting purposes, though wonder whether the ability to run customer invoices, etc. might make the Home & Business version worthwhile.
Anyway, thanks again for your help, and be well …
Sean
Just upgraded from QD07 to QD10. Was shocked and very annoyed that QD10 rounds off figures in the account summary column (left hand). If I owe $90. 56 on my credit card, I don’t want it reflecting the I owe $91.00, and if I owe $90.43, I don’t want it to show $90.00. I am terrified I might write a check for the rounded off amount and have a repeat of the experience where the phone company once dinged me $5.00 for accidently leaving ten cents off a payment. I went into setup and preferences looking for a way to disable the rounding off feature. If it’s there, I didn’t see it. If I can’t turn it off, I may uninstall QD10 for just that reason.
George, to remove the roundoff feature in Quicken 2010 simply right click on “Banking” (left column) and check off “Show cents in amounts.”
Dan,
Many, many thanks for the tip. Will now upgrade to QD10 on my other PCs.
George
George, to remove the roundoff feature in Quicken 2010 simply right click on “Banking” (left column) and check off “Show cents in amounts.”
They may have added things, but they took away one of the most useful shortcut keystrokes – Alt-C to get to the reconcile page. You have to press and then release the alt key, then press s, then press r three times and finally enter. You have to do the same thing to get back to reconciling after adding a new entry in the middle of the reconcile. How annoying!!!
Let me know if you find a way to get Alt-C back. I’m looking for macro software now.
I’ve used Quicken almost since it started. It used to be rock solid – and then all of a sudden when they started adding all these bells and whistles, the bugs came – in droves. It really turned me off. I’m currently still using Premier H&B 2004. I tried to upgrade a couple of times and found the newer versions clunky and buggy. I’m leary of upgrading. I know this version and it works. I believe I’ll wait and see what your and others reviews are a month or two from now. If they’re still positive, maybe I’ll upgrade.
My problem is I’m using Quickbooks Online for my business but don’t like Quickbooks for a number of reasons. I need to consolidate and choose one or the other. I can’t keep using both.
I just got Quicken 2010 Home & Business. I can not update to the current rev 2.
I tried to do the updates through the Help menu – Download latest version. It said that I had Q2010 R1 and that there was an R2 available. It went through and started the update with three green dots on the status bar and then failed to complete the updates. What should I do? I am concerned that I will not be able to get any updates if it is acting like this now.
It did not do the updates during the install. It gave me error messages.
Thanks for any help you can offer.
-ek
ek,
I think your best bet is contacting Intuit directly to help with your problem. I merely reviewed the software I don’t work for Intuit. They are going to provide you much better support than I can. You can go to their support site for help: http://quicken.intuit.com/support/windows.jsp
Download the patch manually from the Intuit website:
http://quicken.intuit.com/support/articles/using-quicken/patches-and-updates/7526.html
Jusy updated from Quicken deluxep8 to Quicken 2010. It is looking for a password on files that did not have passwords???
I downloaded Quicken 2010 and am getting an Error Message 8143…Quicken Failed to Launch when I try to Register. This is the same problem I had with Quicken 2007 and Vista. I was hoping that Quicken 2010 was more compatible with Vista and I wouldn’t get this message. Intuit doesn’t have a clue. Any ideas on why I’m still getting this error message with Quicken 2010? Thanks for any feedback anyone can provide.
Erin try running it as administrator:
If you use Windows Vista, run Quicken as Administrator
1. Close Quicken.
2. On the Windows Desktop, right-click the Quicken icon and select Run as.
3. In the Run As window:
1. Select The following user.
2. Click the User name drop-down arrow and select the Administrator.
3. In the Password box, enter the Administrator password.
4. Click OK.
4. If you receive a warning about unauthorized access, click Allow.
This might solve your problem.
Nope, that didn’t work. Any other ideas? Thanks!
So Quicken Deluxe 2010 does allow you to track investments? I’m going to upgrade from 2006 and I couldn’t find what exactly it allows you to do – 2006 allows you to track cost vs. current values and will update those values when you go online. I can’t figure out what the Premier would add if Deluxe still allows me to track the way I have been.
It allows you to track some investments,it’s an excellent question on what vs. the other you can’t track in deluxe vs. premium. I don’t have a copy of premium so cannot comment on the differences.
This may sound a bit juvenile, but does Quicken 2010 have something similar to MS Money’s Cash Flow Forecasting chart? I’m in the market to purchase software to replace my makeshift excel spreadsheets, and I’ve become fond of this tool from my ol’ MS Money 2002; please advise.
Hmm I’m not familiar with the Cash Flow Forecasting, this might be equivalent to you setting up budget categories in Quicken. Mint certainly has more cash forecasting tools and I know they plan to incorporate those into Quicken going forward but I can’t comment on the same functionality in 2010 vs MS Money. What did you use that charting for?
Under Bills – Calendar – Show Full Calendar… there is a month-by-month balance forecast. You can go as far into the future as you want, but it only shows one month at a time (unlike Money where it shows multiple months on the same chart). As with money you can view one account or multiple accounts. It is shown as a stacked bar graph (where Money showed line graphs with a “total” line). The only bug I have found is that when you make a one-time adjustment to a scheduled bill reminder (for example, bumping an expected $1,000 income to $1,500 one time only) the “Full Calendar” shows the correct daily balance but the bar graph does not reflect the change.
I’ve been using Q2009 H&B under Vista for over a year (and Q2008 and earlier under XP, and earlier than that, for years), and have had no serious problems with managing two nonprofit businesses that include asset/liability accounts, plus my personal accounts, which include an investment portfolio, credit cards, etc. I have managed various kinds of workarounds to the annoying limitations (no sorting on categories because it’s in the same column as Payee? Huh? Autofill on Find can’t be set to user spec, like searching on category? Huh? Lots of dopey “solutions” like that). I have looked over 2010’s ads and info on the Intuit site and apart from questionable bling, I see nothing that inspires me to get an upgrade. Am I missing something, or are we seeing stability-without-substantive-change here?
Jordan-Smith,
You may have it, I can’t honestly say that I used 2009 and if it works for you I’d be the last to say that you absolutely need to upgrade.
i am using ms money since 2000.
What are the benefits for my personal fin. mgt. in case of upgrading my file and continue with quicken platform ?
Thank you in advance.
Probably the biggest is that you’ll have operating software with newer operating systems.
I have had MS Money since 2001 and using with XP Home. I am aware that Money will not continue but have also seen that Quicken has limited life so have been looking elsewhere.
With the iminent intention to switch to a new PC with windosws 7 professional, retaining my laptop with XP professional and wasnting personal finance software that will be available long term, can you please suggest any other software to look at besides ‘You Need a Budget’ that I could consider.
Thanks a lot
I’m not so sure about Quicken having a limited life. They just recently purchased Mint at mint.com which is a great online alternative, you might also try Budgetpulse.com a free online service or Pocketsmith available at pocketsmith.com I guess it depends on what you’re wanting to do.
Thanks for the reply, but I read in one of the Web sites or a magazine that both Money and Quicken were not being continued after 2010, so an alternative was needed. I have since looked at Bank Tree and found it covers almost all the things I need and have now started with that. No problem downloading bank statements and importeng them into the accounts and the reports are similar to Money once the categories of spending have been altered to suit.
I did try Quicken before Mone some years ago, but found that too involved and not as easy as Money. Keep up the good work
Malcolm.
Paul
I can’t get moringstar ratings or other morningstar info to show up on the new Premier 2010 I just installed ………. Any help ?
Many thanks for your review! I used Quicken Premier 2008 and have difficulty seeing the investment transactions because the investment register has so small text and does not support the same option as other registers to increase the font size. Does Premier 2010 enable more flexibility in the viewing (font size) options for the investment register?
Current MS Money user here…When Quicken downloads data from your bank, does it give you the option to check-off or approve each transaction?
Does it give you the option to add transactions that have not made it to your bank account yet? Like checks? And if so is it smart enough to sync your manual entry with what will be downloaded from the bank when the check clears?
Matt, yes on all questions.
I am a long term user of MS Money can the files be converted to Quicken 2010 and does it do all the things money does e.g. set up to input fornighly amounts into your accounts ??
and transfer money between accountc etc.
Similar to John’s posting on 2009/10/22 at 6:55 pm, I also had issues when I “upgraded” several years ago (I tried to upgrade every year to ensure ongoing support). I can not use the graphs or the “net worth” reports as the numbers are definitely screwed up. Interesting enough the running tabs on the main menu appear to be correct, but some of the reports and most of the graphs are different. Interesting as they must not add numbers the same way. Similarly, the people in India simply told me my database was corrupt. After using quicken for more than 10 years, I am not prepared to re-enter any data. If Intuit is reading this forum, I hope they come out with some kind of fix for “corrupted” databases. I also hope they post somthing that indicates what data to purge (to reduce the database size) and what not to (kind of a system maintenance guide – so the people in India don’t have to lecture you about maintaining your system when there is no guide for doing it).
I also have experienced this same anomaly with the Net Worth Graphs. The Net Worth at the bottom of the account listings seems to be accurate. The Net Worth on the Graph is wrong. I believe it has something to do with Investment Calculations (realized / unrealized gains) – The trick is finding which transactions are not calculating correctly for the Net worth graph. If you can find those – and re-enter them – it seems to fix it. Finding those is hit or miss.
I have been using a PC and Quicken for years (current version 2008), because of the age of my laptop I am thinking of changing to an Apple computer (laptop) as we travel a lot. Will I be able to download my quicken files to the Mac version of Quicken?
I’ve been a Quicken user for many years, but I don’t upgrade every year. In fact, I only upgrade when they “sunset” a release; for example, using 2006, you won’t be able to download transactions from your financial institution.
Also, Intuit has a terrible track record with new releases. If I were to consider the 2010 version, I would wait until spring, after they’ve issued the usual round of patches. Put it this way: I am using Quicken 2009 R7, which means they’ve issued six rounds of bug fixes.
There is an online community where you can read about bugs, user experiences. etc. at https://qlc.intuit.com/app/full_page .
Hi,
My name is Venkat and I was in US for a while where i have used mint.com and I liked it but back in India, I was finding it hard to digest that this market has not really been tapped..there are moneycontrol’s of the world but do not provide what a consumer really needs…i guess they forget 2 most important aspects….comprehensive and automated !! All the money manager tools do a 50% job of these two aspects!! Then a friend told me about Perfios Software Co. Ltd. (http://www.perfios.com)and even though the app looks like of the 1990’s the functionality is awesome…they are the most comprehensive of all the s/w’s i have seen till date for india and the auto update feature is ultimate….Arthamoney comes very close but…having money is not everything…you can buy full page ads on TOI but can you deliver? NO i guess…u can deliver only if ur porduct is good…hats off to Perfios folks….
~Venkat
Paul, thank you for the very nice review. I have been using Quicken since the early 90s and I upgrade every 2 or 3 versions. I am currently using Q2008 R8 and am thinking about upgrading to 2010. I use it to track my financial accounts (semi-obsessively) and it works very well. I have never lost a transaction, although I have corrupted a file.
If this data is important to you, you must back it up every time you add or change data. You only need to keep a couple of backups. You can also (probably should) archive old information into one or more archived files. I have 3 years of info on my current file and 15+ years on my archived file. If you need specific info from that time, you just load that file.
I haven’t found Quicken’s built in financial graphs or reports very useful. They don’t have good enough info on the assets to be useful. They are simplistic at best and probably make incorrect assumptions about the data.
One built in tool that I use religiously is the “validate” tool. You find it in File|File Operations|Validate.
Thanks again for the review, and good luck to all the users.
Regards,
Bob
Thanks for your kind comments Bob hope you keep coming back.
Went from QD07 to QD10. New version seems to take forever to do anything, especially backing files up to other drives. In QD07 I could go into Quicken Backup, highligh the current drive letter designation, type in new letter designation, and hit Backup Now. With QD10 I have to go into Quicken Backup, click Change, then click My Computer, then click the new drive, then click OK, which takes me back to Quicken Backup, where I have to click Backup Now and wait while Quicken takes forever to do a single backup. I’m seriously considering going back to an earlier version.
Just found this siite as I was reviewing the pros and cons of upgrading to Quicken 2010. The 2010 edition looks like it will be cumbersome to use with too many options, etc. Ready for this? I haven’t upgraded since 1998! My computer guy years ago tweaked different computers so that it will run on them. I am now using XP on a laptop and considering a new system with Windows 7. I understand the 1998 edition won’t run on it. From what I’ve read about 2010, there are a lot of bells and whistles I don’t need. Do you know if there is an older version that would run on both XP and Windows 7?
Sylvia first welcome hope it’s the first of many visits. Maybe if you were a little more specific for what you are looking for I could be of assistance. What’s your primary use for finance software? As to compatibility with Win7 you need to be pretty recent as far as Quicken for compatibility. Be sure to read through the comments as some seasoned Quicken users have some real world experience that might be useful.
Hi Paul,
I’m running 2007 Quicken Deluxe, and wondering if 2010 deluxe permits an option to do a ‘clean install’ (vs. upgrade). I’m running Vista Home premiere on my laptop, and would like to do a ‘clean install’ of Quicken 2010, (preserving Q2007) so if its buggy, I can go back to 2007, and the ‘backup’ 2007 formatted qdf file.
However, in the past, once a previous version is seen, Quicken wants to upgrade (in contrast to office 2003 and 2007 running simultaneously on Vista, except for Outlook).
I know I could uninstall 2007 Qdeluxe on the laptop, and then install Q2010, and import the .qdf file, but would rather not! Ive been using Quicken for about 12 years, and agree with all the comments on the customer service support. All software has qwirks, but I used to work in technology when my company still really had tech support! Still believe in the saying “if it aent broke, don’t fix it,” but I realize Q2007 deluxe will likely be ‘voided’ for updates, soon, with Win7 coming out, and so I’m looking at Q2010 deluxe.
BTW, I use a completely separate set of categories and subcategories for my business income/expenses, along with a separate checking account and credit card(accountant suggestion to me) but I use ‘classes’ for things like categorizing medical expenses into tax related classes like ‘HSA qualified’, HSA unqualified (deducted as med expense), HSA submitted, HSA distributed. Sounds like from reading your comment, that ‘tag’ has replaced ‘classes’ in 2010? Used to be under tools/classlist or ‘control L’
Thanks for any insights!
Happy Holidays!
Deb
Honestly I can’t comment on the clean install, I don’t have an earlier version of Quicken to test, but your idea of backing up and importing seems like a possibility.
I currently have quicken deluxe 2006 and loaded it on my new computer. I can’t get it to print. I want to upgrade to a quicken deluxe 2010. Will the data from the 2006 be compatible with 2010? Will it cause me any problems?
Richard it’s supposed to import without problems, I think you’ll be good.
Richard,
I too am having the same print problems and I am looking into upgrading from 2006. Did you upgrade, if you did, were there any problems?
thanks
Paul,
I just bought 2010 delux AND a new computer running Windows 7. the version on my old computer is 200 delux. Will I be able to import the old data without problems or loss of function? How hard is is to do for a non geek?
Craig
It should be as simple as opening the old file. I haven’t heard of any issues regarding upgrades, although I don’t have actual experience with this version opening in 2010.
thanks for the great info. I have a quick question. I have quicken ‘06 for mac, and have been using quicken since 1999. (Continually upgrading). I need the functionality of syncing with my bank, because i have a few hundred deposits every month and I also do my bill paying online with my bank. In the last few months the syncing has gotten really out of whack. When I reconcile at month end, the process usually took seconds, because it always balanced perfectly. Now, it seems to miss a few transfers of funds or online bill payments. It is really annoying and frustrating. When I spoke with a quicken rep, he said, I probably have corrupted files since i’ve been using it for so many years.
I was going to purchase the windows version 2010, (I’m running a virtual machine on my mac), but am not sure if it’s worth the investment. I would like to start the New Year fresh, with windows version, and just keep all of my old Quicken Mac information backed up on time machine in case its needed. What are your thoughts
steve
Hard to say Steve I don’t have long term evidence to point to but seems to be working great for me so far. I do prefer You Need a Budget 3 though overall and it’s going to be the software I stick with long term. There new beta now supports Mac you might want to try it although you have to download the transactions from your bank rather than auto sync, but that’s about a 30 second process for me.
I AM CURRENTLY USING QUICKEN 2003. WILL QUICKEN 2010 BE WORTH AN UPGRADE?
I was perfectly happy with QD07, but upgraded because I knew I would lose the ability to download from my online banking sites when Intuit stops support for QD07. I have a very fast PC, but waiting for QD10 to perform common tasks is like “watching paint dry.” Why is it so slow? Didn’t have the problem with QD07 and QD10 is the only application that frustrates me this way.
I am using Microsoft Money 2008. Will I be able to transfer all my data into Quicken 2010?
Don the statement from Quicken in it’s literature is that you absolutely should be able to import your Money data into Quicken.
Paul,
Thanks for the review, I appreciate your efforts. I only wish that I had read your post prior to throwing down a wad of cash for Q-2010. I have used Quicken for many years and generally have been satisfied with the product. Q-2010, however, is a real disappointment! As you stated in your writ there are really few reasons to upgrade, very little is new. Many things have been moved around, others left out entirely and the big push to get you get you net-social is nearly overwhelming. The program butchered my 2009 data file during the conversion, had to start from scratch to get things setup properly. Imagine my surprise after spending several hours trying to navigate the endless myriad of confusing ‘options’ without a great deal of success, to discover that there were no ‘manuals’ online, instead they recommend you buy a commercially written ‘book’ on how to do Q-2010. The backup feature of 2010 has been rendered almost worthless for those using multiple drives to accomplish such. I have updated to Release R3, but the problems remain.
I will leave 2010 installed, but return to 2009 until Quicken issues the next Release. As of this writing I can not recommend anyone updating unless you just ‘got to’ have it.
It would be nice if Intuit offers to download checks images from the banks. Let’s say I have 3 checks to deopit.
$50 from aa bb, $100 from c d, and $200 from e f.
If I deposit them together in one transaction is $350.
How nice if Quicken downloads all the check images. and add a searchable note such as:
aa bb $50 (or just aa bb, c d , e f )
c d $100 …
so in months or years later, I can search and will be able to find aa bb or c d that I deposited.
Instead just showing a $350 transaction. who will remember from who and what.
Intuit your product is not at the dead end (like Winfax) . move on and implement it
In addition: Bank of America allows their online customers to download all the check images (Front and back) of checks deposited to account and checks written to pay.
Pentagon Federal Credit Union’s “Check Plus” also has this feature. Not something you use everyday, but certainly worthwhile in managing a checking account.
After I reading the feedbacks from others in this review/forum. I realize that upgrade is the worthless and would waist few hours along with worries as it may screw up my data.
I also just got an 50% offer directly from Intuit for 2010 Dlx and WillsMaker 2010 = $29.99. I decided to pass this good deal and continue with my 2007 Dlx. All I would want is to wait until Intuit to implement the download checks images from the banks. I willing to pay $49.99 for new version that able or has capable to download the checks deposited/written images.
I would suggest new users to buy older version for much cheap cost – 2009 or 2008 or 2007. which have to same the feature as 2010.
I live in the UK and I’m trying to purchase or download a copy of Quicken 2010 Deluxe. Are you aware of any retaillers where I can do this as none of the major ones will allow me to (Amazon.com/buycheapsoftware.com).
I honestly don’t know Michelle, you might try eBay?
Oh lord I think I screwed up by upgrading to Quicken 2010.
1 – Quicken reports have never been very user friendly but with 2010 it’s even worse. I’m getting a 3″ left margin even with the settings at .5. An old gripe – Quicken has never allowed margins less than .5 even though I’ve had printers which can handle margins of .25.
2 – Where the heck did they get the idea that EVERYBODY would want tags. It appears they’ve ramed TAGS down our throats and have given us no means of doing away with them. They’re every where, taking up realestate and I don’t like them. I haven’t been able to find anything about getting rid of them. I DO NOT WANT THEM IN THE CHECK REGISTER, ETC. ETC.
After over 25 years of using Quicken I’m ready to walk away from Intuit products.
This is a great review of the product that I am now forced to move to. I have been a longtime MS Money — circa 2000 and was very disappointed to see that Microsoft was discontinuing this product. For the absence of competition for 1 point, but that I have always liked the functionality of MS Money over Quicken. Now that this is gone, I will convert but I am very concerned about the historical information I have stored in MS Money and converting it to Quicken. This is a good resource that I have now bookmarked in my Internet favorites. Thanks!
You got it Tom thanks for stopping by and if you’ve got any tricks or tips to share I’m sure the readers would love to hear about them. Good luck!
Paul,
Any updates from running this in parallel for a couple of months? How has the ” Zero Based Budget” portions of the app working out?
Best,
Robert Cain
http://www.robertcain.info
Robert,
I confess that I reverted back to You Need a Budget mainly because they just came out with version 3 in Beta. I just prefer the budgeting portion of YNAB way over Quicken’s version. To be fair I’ve also been using YNAB for over a year so it’s hard to want to switch to something entirely different. I do miss not having the investment tracking though.
Hi Paul,
Thanks for your review! I just got that notification that my Quicken 07 will lose it’s download capability so I am trying to decide between upgrading and using an online program like Mint.
I love Quicken, save one issue. In my current version, my credit card (B of A) transactions can not be downloaded between statements. I have to wait until my statement cuts, and download it all at once. Needless to say, halfway through the month I have no idea where I am in my budget (unless I devote a lot of time I don’t have manually entering transactions), and that causes problems following my budget. I know it’s not a B of A issue because Mint (and some other online programs) have that capability.
Can you tell me if the 2010 version fixes this?
Thanks
I’m afraid I cannot Jessica, I gave up credit cards a year ago so I don’t have anything to track that against or to even try it out. Perhaps some of the other readers can comment.
Jessica,
I believe that is a problem with your card issurer, rather tthan QD07. I too used Q07 before upgrading to QS10 and I was always able to download statement entries as soon as they are posted to my Visa account. Since I have a rewards card, I use it for nearly every purchase and download almost daily. Chase makes me wait at least three days between payments, but that is a minor inconvenience.
Maybe looking forward and I quote maybe to Mac 2010….I have been a quicken PC customer for about 15+ years and just switched to a Mac. I always thought quicken was the best thing since sliced bread or maybe air conditioning but I have to say right now I think it “sucks”….
First I had problems loading it. Which at this point after three chats that lasted almost 9 hours, and is now loaded….
Next I can’t line up my checks….
The service Chatting is less than poor. The phone service is only available 5a-5p west coast time and I am on the east coast and they don’t even call you back…
My bank HSBC does not even do a web connect so I guess I have to manually reconcile my checking…
Not having fun…
Would like to know where data is stored if I buy 2010 edition. If data stored on hard drive can I add addtional security?
I have been trying to futz around with the Quicken 2010 Premier version. I fell for the half off promo–boy, I’ll chock that one up to stupid tax! I have not been a Quicken user in the past. In the current age of competition, I would have thought that Intuit would be more intuitive about how to serve the customer, especially a first timer. Among the problems I have had, which I have read about in the threads on this site:
1) I cannot get in touch with someone when I have a question! Instead, I email someone and hope they will contact me within three hours. When I did finally get a message back it was clearly someone from India! Not that there is a problem with this, but in the message they didn’t even give me any advice to my question that I stated very clearly. Instead, they suggested that I email again to have someone contact me…arrgggghhhh!!!
2) I cannot get my investment accounts to go through direct connect and from reading the above threads, it appears that I won’t be able to…the very reason that I purchased the premier version!
3) I wish I had read the threads on your site BEFORE I purchased. I would NOT recommend this version of Quicken for anyone!!
I totally agree with your assessment of Quicken support, or lack thereof. I purchased the Qucken Rental Property software a week ago. The purchase price came out of my account almost immediately, but I never recieved a confirmation page or a download link. There is no number to call and talk with anyone. I found myself emailling my question and waiting around for a response….approximately 4 hours later. I still had trouble with the ID that was provided to me and had to email again today. As a business owner, I am dumbfounded at this lack of customer service. I equate this to opening a fast food restaurant with drive through service only…..just to find out that there are no drive through window attendants, that you have to email your order in. This is a disgrace and I would not recommend Quicken products to anyone.
I do not have an opinion on the functionality of the product itself, as I am still, as of today, unable to download the product.
I cannot provide
I have 2010 deluxe to set up new file. Have converted old file, and can print out transactions, but cannot view, go to register. I read to go to Banking tab, can’t find register anywhere. How, where to look for register? I want to view the register with its transactions. Just to make sure transactions were in the file, I printed out one month, and sure enough, they are there. Thanks for you help so much. I am not an expert, but do enjoy having the ability to enter data, do reports for my accountant, even if I don’t use any of the investment, planning, services. At lease I have a compiled and categorized file of data from which to do reports. Thanks.
Quicken 2010 is nothing more than Quicken 2004. No important functionality has been added. Intuit needs money and so they announced that the 2004 version will no longer download transactions from your financial institutions and thus you MUST buy Quicken 2010. Perhaps it is time that Intuit works on new products instead of beaten an old, but useful horse to death. This forced purchased has caused me to not consider ANY of Intuits products. Like they say, money talks. It’s my small contribution to relaying a message. Milking customers is never a good strategy.
Why would you recommend YNAB ($59.99) when you can buy Quicken Deluxe for the same or much, much less?
That’s an excellent question Jeff. Yes it doesn’t have many of the features that Quicken does with respect to automation, but honestly that’s not what I’m looking for most. I wanted a piece of software focused entirely on budgeting and the other features were merely nice to haves. While I don’t credit my success in the last year to YNAB alone but it has helped my wife and I immeasurably to bust out of debt and maintain a monthly budget. That’s why I myself choose You Need a Budget and why I think it’s worth the cost. Not to mention there support environment is fantastic because this is all they do, they are not a large corporation like Intuit has become. Seeing all of these comments from disgruntled Quicken users is definitely eye opening. I’m still using both pieces of software right now FYI because they both have their strong points.
I’ve been a Quicken user for years, but now, with Quicken 2010, I’m looking at switching to
MS Money. Too bad I’ve already paid for Quicken 2010, it’s a POS!
Tom I hate to be the bearer of bad news but Microsoft is longer producing MS Money so whatever you might purchase is End of Sale.
I’m a MSMoney user since Money98 and had been satisfied. I just purchased Quicken 2010, installed it, and imported my old Money files – no problem. I then went to setup online banking (the only reason I’m not still using MSMoney) and connected to the institutions without problem. When the data was downloaded from the first bank, Quicken did not match most of the transactions with transactions already in the register and made duplicate entries. I could not find a mechanism similar to MSMoney’s that would allow me to accept or correct the matching of downloaded transactions to existing transactions. I now have about 500 extra transactions in checking and savings account from this bank. I think it’s time to checkout Quicken’s 60 day return policy!
I had the same problem at first.
Go to Edit – Preferences – Quicken Preferences – Downloaded Transactions. Uncheck “Automatic transaction entry”. It will then present each downloaded transaction to you.
Does anyone know if Quicken 99 can be used with Windows 7 or Windows 7 “pro”? I was recently forced to upgrade to Quicken 2010 due to a new computer with a Windows 7 operating system. I hate it. There is no memo field in the check register to make notes about a transaction and I would much rather go back to my old Quicken 99.
Do you have plans to or have you reviewed Moneydance? I was intrigued by Squawkfox’s comment and took a quick look at the web site. I had never heard of it before. Guess I’m new to your site as well.
Eldon,
It’s not really on my radar to review, but one I am looking at and will have a review this week is on a relatively new online personal finance application PocketSmith. Be sure to check back later this week or better yet, subscribe via RSS or Subscribe to FiscalGeek by Email.
1st time reader. Appreciated it and have added it to favorites. To the point; I am looking for Feedback on Windows to Mac conversion for quicken 2010. I am a 10yr user of Quicken on Windows, primarily for tracking investments but also budgets, etc. I am currently using Quicken 2009. I am losing sleep over losing history, especially cost basis and purchase dates on investments. Any booby traps I need to be aware of? Are there other investment software choices that will take Quicken data files?
Any thoughts or suggestions welcome.
Pam are you asking about converting from Quicken PC version to the MAC? or vice versa? The MAC version of quicken is do it in February but from what I understand it’s a scaled down version of Quicken called Quicken Essentials. I plan to test and review once it’s released, but I’m afraid I can’t answer your question on the conversion from one platform to the next. As far as your last question on investment software, none that I’m aware of, MS Money was the only real player in that space and they are gone. One thought is that Quickbooks would probably allow you to import that data as it sounds like you’re using it for some form of business this might be the time go give it a go.
I’ve been delighted with Quicken DeLuxe 99 for a long time. I can do everything with it, and do not want a product that claims it will even brush my teeth and tell my fortune! My SOLE concern is the possibility of long-term incompatibility with some future highly evolved version of Windows (I’m on XP Pro now). Is this a valid concern?
David I have reason to believe you should be concerned moving to say Windows 7. Read through the comments here, some have had mixed success running old versions.
Hi Paul, thanks for the wonderful review.
Is it possible for you to do a GnuCash review. It would be nice to know how an open source one stacks up to the paid ones.
I might add that to my list, but no promises
.
Paul, & everyone else who has contributed: Many thanks! I’m and on & off QD user since the 90’s. Fully agree with the comments that the added complexity Intuit added in starting with the 2000 version ruined a pleasant experience. Sure, I liked the possibilities of all the added functionality, but “user-friendly” does not seem to be in Intuit’s lexicon.
Anyway, I’ve heard about YNAB before and may head that way. The original reason I contemplated QD10 was to get access to customize categories for budgeting. Wells Fargo on-line banking has a nice categorization function, but it’s not customizable.
Looking forward to poking around your site – nice work!
Hi Paul,
I am a long time user of Quicken and on again off again user of Turbotax. I have recently felt the need to use an accountant since I am self employed; but LLC corp. I am thinking of upgrading from Quicken Home and Business 2008 to 2010. I would really like to eliminate the accountant piece, but struggle with setting up the accounts properly to allow for accurate and convenient downloads to Turbotax. Is there a guide somewhere that would assist me with this? I have entertained buying one of those “dummies” books, but I think they are too basic.
Thanks for any assistance or comments- nice review!
Great question, I just saw another guide when I was in Barnes and Noble the other day and it looked a little more complete. They were out of stock of the official guide so honestly I don’t know if it will go into the depth that you are looking for. Might have the best look perusing the shelves of your local super bookstore.
Hi Paul – thank you for the review – very useful indeed. One question i have for you is – can Quicken 2010 be tweaked to work in £GB rather than $US? Also, do you think that you could tweak state taxes in it to show as out VAT (Value Added Tax) – our equivalent of purchase tax?
Also our rather elderly version doesn’t like printing any more when being run on Windows 7. Is Quicken 2010 working ok in that regard? We have two HP printers
Thanks
Jeremy
Paul,
We need to track our expenses religiously for primarily filling out EOY financial aid packages for our kids and to get better insight into Sched C prep for my husband’s property mgmt business. Will Quicken 2010 Deluxe do it or is Home/Business completely necessary? I want to be able to import monthly Credit Card and Bank statements and easily categorize into 5 major categories: food, merchandise, fuel and car maintenance, medical, and utilities. Please advise.
You should be fine with the Deluxe version. The nice thing is that if you decide that you are missing some features you need you can upgrade to the Home and Business edition for a reduced amount. Many people are using Quicken to manage their business avoiding the move to Quickbooks.
I just want to make sure I’m not missing something, regarding expense tracking using Quicken. From your review, it seems they still haven’t corrected a major deficiency. I manage the finances for my developmentally disabled godson. I track about 20 categories of expenditures. Am I right that Quicken provides no facility to display several months history in side-by-side columns on the same page? I spend a least 4 hours every month downloading my Quicken latest-month expenditures into a comma delimited file, converting that to Excel, and then reconnecting that Excel download into various spreadsheets of my multi-month Excel workbook. Thanks.
John I don’t believe that mechanism is built into this version either, no.
Paul – any thoughts on pros and cons of quicken deluxe vs the free online version – mint?
Hmmm not terribly similar other than the account reconciliation. Truthfully I’m not a huge fan of consolidating all of my finances online. I’m a little paranoid that way. I have a future post scheduled to look into the security ramifications of something like Mint or Yodlee keep posted for that one in the coming month.
Hi, I’m from SA and would like to know where can I buy the 2010 version of Quicken?
Please let me know.
Thank you
Annaleen,
I’m afraid I don’t know the answer to that, you might try eBay.
Thanks for the info Paul. I use Quicken 2008 right now, and am considering upgrading to the 2010 for the improved budgeting module, or going to YNAB. I have been using Quicken for years, and use Quickbooks at work so I am very familiar with their platforms. I don’t want to get in a situation where I am double-entering each transaction. I saw where you said you had gone back to YNAB, but you stated that part of that decision was familiarity with YNAB. Given that I am quite familiar with Quicken in general, would you say that the budgeting module is strong enough now, or would you still recommend YNAB? Why?
Thanks for your time and effort!
Darin
Darin I think you would probably be fine with the Quicken budgeting. You can always try out YNAB for free for a week just to give it a whirl. You might be hooked.
I know Microsoft is no longer providing Money upgrades or support for users, but if I’m happy with what I have, and have used it for years, and don’t care about updates, can I just continue to use the version I have without problem? The only thing I use it for outside of my data input is updating investment prices…..After reading all the issues people have with Quicken, it sure doesn’t make me want to convert!
If it ain’t broke then don’t fix it Gail. If it’s working for you then I am not going to try and get you to convert. Microsoft will support it until January 2011 and then you won’t be able to get automated feeds from your banks etc. But you should still be able to import transactions by downloading a file from your bank directly. I imagine it will still work just not quite as conveniently.
I don’t use the bank automated feeds anyway, I post everything manually…may be old fashioned but I want to know all my transactions, not just the ones that have cleared.
What is important to me is the investment pricing….will that no longer update after Jan 2011?
I recieved yet another copy of the 2010 Quicken Upgrade CD in the mail. I was prepared to install it today but thought I would do a little research first. That is when I stumbled across your site, which has now been forwarded to some of my family and friends. Thank you for your great write up and follow up comments. It was helpful in making my decision not to purchace Quicken again. I briefly toured the YNAB site and find it will probably work better for me in the long run. However, I do have a couple questions. How is their documentation and bank data download capability?
Thanks in advance for your help.
It’s good Phyllis, you might want to read my review of YNAB 3.0 for the full details.
Thanks Paul, I will check it out.
Hi Paul,
I checked out the article and was sold. Your statement, “It’s personal finance software built around a budget, not financial tracking software with a budget component”, was key. I am a “graduate” of Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University and the zero based budget design is perfect. I like the flexibility and ability to tailor it based on my specific needs and budget. I found myself working around Quicken’s features and why I hesitated to upgrade. Thanks again for pointing me in the right direction!
I have used Quicken for about 15 years Starting with one of the first versions in 1997. I upgraded in 1999 and 2004 and 2005. Every single time I upgraded Quicken had so many bugs I was sorry I ever upgraded. I’m using Quicken 2005 now and suddenly since support has cease it won’t print reports anymore. I was doing it last month. I guess I’ll be force to update to 2010 but I sure hope they have worked out the bugs. Support seems non existant on the website.
I read some time ago that Intuit bought a lot of small companies that produced small tidbits performing specific processes that were added to the overall product. The up-side was more functionality. The down-side included a couple of thing. One, incorporating so many disparate code bases proved difficult for the integrators at Intuit. The second, and this is the important part as far as the retirement of older versions of Quicken, was that some of these code bases were using the registery in a way that was deemed unsafe by those that hack and crack and complain that Microsoft Windows products were not secure. So, Intuit has had to completely change the underlying code base while trying to maintain the previous functionality, just to be able to display the Windows logo. If you think that is not important, understand that lots of government agencies and private companies do not allow software on their networks that are not logo-ed. The stringent requirements associated with getting your software logo-ed is necessarily quite daunting, but results in software that will not break the operating system. Whether the program works as advertised, that is a totally different concern.
To those that complain that Intuit is sunsetting your software for financial gain, understand that computer security, and the need to protect their platform from people that seem to have nothing better to do with their time than find ways of corrupting an operating system, have forced Microsoft into enforcing more strict ways of handling interprocess communication, etc., to the point of rendering these otherwise useful software packages useless. These changes began in XP, but were expanded in Vista and now in 7. That’s why some users of older Intuit packages began having problems with XP, and the problems have just multiplied when these packages try to run on later OS’s. There are technical reasons that Intuit does not want you to run the older packages on newer OS’s, and they are reasons that Intuit can do nothing about.
Again, this is based on my recollection of information I read some time back. Like all things on the ‘Net, use at your discretion.
Anyone have issues patch upgrading to 7 from 5? 2010 deluxe on XP Pro, ran as admin, starts to upgrade and then stops short and gives an error. Followed all the advice on shutting down every service I have running, including firewall and norton. Hmmm. Even did the banking update prior to trying the patch.
I’m one of those stranded MS Money users trying to figure out where to point myself. In late 2008 I converted from PC to Mac and haven’t looked back. I’ve been running Money under Parallels and it’s worked flawlessly. Then Microsoft announced they were getting out of the personal finance software business, and I’ve been exploring alternatives for the last month.
Since I’m now on a Mac, my first thought was to get with the forward-looking trend and switch to one of the cloud-based systems. I tired Mint, Yodlee, iBank and several other “cloud” solutions. Alas, only Yodlee supports direct bill pay (where you enter a payment transaction and it sends it to your bank’s online bill payment system for processing and keeps the transaction in the check register maintained by Yodlee). But, Yodlee did not support several of my online accounts including Charles Schwab checking and savings and American Express savings. It was also brittle – meaning it had updated information sometimes, but not always, and would randomly refuse to submit payment transactions to my bank. None of the other cloud systems support bill payment through an existing bank – which I think is really really basic need, and none (including Yodlee) support detailed tracking of brokerage transactions. I scratched my head and thought “Jeez, am I crazy, or isn’t this stuff important to most people who have multiple accounts?”
So I pressed on, looking for a non-cloud-based solution. I checked out MoneyDance, GnuCash and Quicken 2007 for Mac, and all of them were so confounding, after 2 weeks, I checked answer E – none of the above.
I turned my sites to the about-to-be-released Quicken Essentials for the Mac. After getting membership to the Intuit “insiders” forums, I found a host of information about that product from users doing beta testing, and lots of complaining about missing features, and Quicken product management waffles and personnel changes. The bottom line is Quicken Essentials for Mac is really a non-cloud-based version of Mint, and doesn’t support direct bill pay, or detailed tracking of brokerage transactions, and (get this) can’t output data to TurboTax. After reviewing a number of other blogs where Mac users were in direct contact with Intuit personnel, it became clear that there really is no fully featured Quicken for native Mac users except Quicken 2007 (which will fall into the un-suppored realm soon enough). I’ve read all kinds of glowing remarks about the new guy that came in via the Mint acquisition, and even read his view of how things will unfold over the next year. He has some good ideas, but there’s not going to be a good answer for Mac users for a long time.
OK, so I decide to drop my “native Mac” requirement and press on. I bought Deluxe version of Quicken 2010 and started the conversion. The good news is that the conversion went pretty well and I was amazed how it just sucked in my data and created all the right accounts, categories and transactions. Sure, there were some hacks, but it went fine – for a while. Then it refused to link with several of my online banks, and after a long chat-based support session, discovered that the file Quicken created from the Money data was corrupt and couldn’t be repaired. So I did the conversion again, checking for corruption at every step and it seems to have gone just fine so far.
I’ve started to try to actually use Quicken 2010. Now I’m as good a Microsoft basher as anyone, but I gotta say, Money just has it all over Quicken 2010 in terms of user interface and usability. In comparison to Money, Quicken looks and acts positively stone age. And I discovered some really oddball hacks: for one one account Quicken only downloaded the last 9 months of transactions from my bank, so I thought I’d just download a QIF file and import that. Think again – no QIF import. I mean seriously folks? And, oh yea, you can tag categories to specific lines on tax forms, but unless you upgrade to the Home & Business version, it won’t give you a report of the tax data. The list goes on and on. Oh, and did I say it was ugly in non-intuitive? OMG.
Having struggled through the conversion to Quicken 2010, I’ve decided to run Money and Quicken in parallel the next 3 months and see how it goes. If anyone is interested, I can continue to post new discoveries here.
My hope in posting this is that someone else who’s stuck in the same situation will have the benefit of this experience.
End of rant.
Well David thanks so much for your insights, I would love it if you keep us posted of your findings as you go, in fact if you want to form them in a slightly more formal guest post I’d be happy to publish.
Hey Paul. I’m not sure what you mean by “form them in a slightly more formal guest post” – can you clarify? If you mean make it less familiar language and more factual, that’s fine. If you mean something else, I’m clueless. Glad to help. Your posts here were a huge help in my quest.
Ihad quicken deluxe 2009 which locked up and I could not get any section of the program towork I tried to reload and that failed. So I deleated the program, rebooted the computer and atemped to reinstall the program from the disk. Now the program comes up with a gray screen and does no respond. Some times locking up my computer. If the 2010 program is as good I do’t went it!!
Hey Mac Users Quicken Essentials for the Mac is out check out my latest review for more info.
I just updated from Quicken 2009 to 2010 and have been a Quicken user since 1995 when it was first out. I chose it because it linked to my bank- Citibank. Suprise when I upgraded to 2010, I lost connection to Citibank- Talked to Intuit India(II?) and after about 5 hours of working on my “corrupt data”(was not corrupt before I upgraded), they gave up. I called Citibank and they said log in changed and new PW. New PW enabled and now all of my Citibank data is now duplicated. Screen loads are slower and I have lost links to several of my retirement accounts. I agree, if it is not broke, don’t fix it. I just got tired of the online pestering screen of please update……
Paul — I’ve been using Quicken since the dark ages on my Mac, then switched to running the Windows version (via Parallels, still on my Mac), because I was tired of all the glitches on the mac version. Well, Q2009 certainly had much better functionality and was more stable, but ever since upgrading to Windows 7, I’ve been getting a screen flicker/reset problem that is incredibly disruptive to work. Basically, every minute the screen resets and the cursor jumps to the date field. This is a well-documented problem on the boards, having something to do with nVidia graphics card incompatibility (of course, the new macbook pros use nVidia cards). Anyway, my question is whether you know if Q2010 has fixed the problem.
I run an nVidia card in my PC without issue using Quicken 2010. Now I don’t know if that translates to the Mac using an nVidia card running Windows 7. I couldn’t tell you on that point specifically but I suspect that if it’s fixed on the PC it would be on the mac as I imagine it uses the same driver. Microsoft has claimed over 30% of crashes associated with Vista were caused by nVidia drivers so that makes sense. I have to admit I’ve always used nVidia cards and prefer them, but I’m off on a technical bent and will stop now.
Great review and the comments from folks match my experience also. Frankly, the online support from Quicken is as good as the manuals you find in their software packaging. But, as you point out there are few alternatives which is so aggravating. I just purchased 2010 Home&Business because my 2007 version is about to expire on 4/1/2010! Add to the fact the software is showing some weirdness now. Things that used to work mysteriously stopped. When I start the s/w it goes to maximum and will not display in any other mode. Add to that transactions downloaded and flagged as needing to be accepted but are not visible to do that anymore.
I saw another post about Moneydance and I’ve downloaded it as well. If i can get MD to work it’s bye bye grief and hello MD.
I bet if the author of this article stuck with quicken, he would have realized not long after realllly diving into quicken that there are some major flaws in it’s budgeting and planning features. The budet tool is not synced with the spending planner, so you have to enter in all of your allocations for each category manually. I realllllly wanted to be able to use quicken, but after around 20 hours or so of working on it, I’ve reached several major roadblocks which leave this product falling flat on its face. I’ve read numerous complaints from financial guys who are MUCH more experienced than I who also spent this much time only to be very dissapointed. Stay away, you’re better off with Excel. I’m going to ask for a full discount (they offer a 60-day money back guarantee). If only we could use Excel to import bank data!
Yes you are right Don the budgeting portion is pretty elementary compared to some other products. That’s the reason I returned to YNAB, I still fiddle with Quicken but for investments right now.
Installed QD2010 yesterday. Imported backup data from previous version from a flash drive. All seemed well first day. Today double-clicked on Quicken icon and get a screen saying “See Where Your Money Goes” with a pie-chart and a “Get Started” block. Can’t find my accounts or any way to get to my account info. Tried to get Quicken help – it’s a joke.
Yes I believe that will end then.